TI-99 Blog

I asked my father to look in his archives/records about at what time he actually bought the TI-99/4A console and the cartridges and how much they did cost back then in Austria.

He bought the basic console in Novemer of 1983 with one command module. He bought another command module in February 1984. In March 1983 he bought a tape recorder from ASAHI, a TI computer book, Extended Basic and several modules.

His records sadly miss the names of the cartridges except for Extended Basic. We had Number Magic, Blackjack & Poker, Yahtzee, Indoor Soccer, Hangman. We had a pair of TI Joysticks as well. We aquired several other cartridges after some years, but he has no records about prices and time.

Product

Time

Schilling

Euro

USD

TI-99/4A Console

11/83

3600

261,62

348.90

Unknown Command Module

11/83

690

50,14

66.87

Unknown Command Module

02/84

269

19,55

26.07

Extended Basic

03/84

2995

217,66

290.26

Other Command Modules

03/84

1169

84,95

113.30

Unknown TI Computer Book

03/84

490

35,61

47.49

Asahi Tape Recorder

03/84

1025

74,49

99.34

Note, that my father aquired all stuff after the black friday in the US, but I don't know yet if it was known in Europe that Texas Instruments will stop the production of its console and will leave the home computer business. If anyone has more information about the happenings in Europe back in the day, please contact me.

Oops!

2 Comments

I live in Austria and my first home computer was a TI 99/4A. I got it in December, 1984. By that time, everyone here was aware that this product was discontinued. For this reason, the TI 99/4A had been recommended to be very cheap for its value. A German TI 99/4A Magazine was being published for several more years and it ever had lots of ads for cardridges and related hardware. My Extended Basic cardridge was manufactured by "Mechatronic". I ordered it in 1985. I don't remember the price, but it was far below the original 2.995 Schilling listed above.
I remember that the TI 99/4A was extremely slow even with Extended Basic programs. Once, I tried to program a melody by translating stored notes into frequencies in real time. This, of course, invoked the exp function which was performed too slow in real time.